


You've Got to Work Through It

by rpb



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man (Tom Holland Movies)
Genre: 'Major Character Death' tag is for grief and reference to death memories, 30 minutes of Peter's time laying in bed, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Mentioned Ben Parker, Mentioned May Parker (Spider-Man), Mentioned Peter Parker's parents, One Shot, Tony Stark Acting as Peter Parker's Parental Figure, not for anything occurring in-story, this is a reflection on grief that realistically takes place over like
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-30
Updated: 2020-01-30
Packaged: 2021-02-27 17:22:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,830
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22467124
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rpb/pseuds/rpb
Summary: It’s life and death and love and grief, and he knows them, but he wishes he hadn’t known them so quickly.So often.————————Post-Endgame, a brief reflection on grief and love from the perspective of one Peter Parker. (With my added experience.) - Heavy overall but ends less-so.
Relationships: May Parker (Spider-Man) & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Tony Stark
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	You've Got to Work Through It

**Author's Note:**

> Content Warning: Deals heavily with various forms of mourning Peter’s experienced (sudden loss, parental loss). Graphic reflection of losing someone to gun violence.

Peter is throwing his school bag to his floor, heaving a heavy sigh and resigning himself to an afternoon spent in bed when his phone rings. He’s already crashed his face into his mattress, so when the song playing isn’t the refrain of Cantina Band, or the intro to Bruce Spingstein’s Dancing in the Dark, Peter doesn’t think picking it up is worth it. He isn’t in the space to talk to someone now, and even if it were Ned or May, he still would have hesitated to answer. He’s just seen the new graffiti thrown on the wall of his apartment complex - a tribute to Tony Stark - and the grief he had kept at bay rises in his throat, threatens to spill over. It had wrapped around his chest as the embrace of an old friend, and he knew he had to welcome it, to accept its weight and turmoil, before he could have any hope of ‘life as usual.’ 

So, then, the bed.

In the mound of blankets and pillows he’d built a comfort of isolation. It was a space for him and his thoughts and his love and his grief. And so he ignored his phone and sunk into his fortress, exhausted not in body but in mind, and curled around a pillow to feel himself again. He’s not even crying, this time. There are no wracking sobs or hitched breaths, just a sort of hollowness as the loss fills his heart and his brain fights to remind him of how much love he still has left - the love of May and Ned and MJ, and of Pepper and Morgan and Happy who it feels are the last people from whom he can learn of Tony. Part of him wants to ask them questions every day, to seek to understand and hold on to memories which fade with each minute. Another part feels it would be rude. He may know grief, but others are not as open to its pull. He doesn’t want to inflict more pain of remembrance, and so it goes unspoken. He’s resigned himself to waiting for those quiet moments - in between meals and drives and press conferences - in which the sobriety of their loss hits them and they are willing to share in Tony with Peter. He takes every broken piece he is given and meshes it onto himself, fearing that it may be the last he receives. 

His phone chimes after the 2-minute mark hits, a new voicemail in his inbox. He won’t check it, not now, but it does remind him of the 9% battery he watched tick down on the way home. Is it worth it, to clamber out of his sheets and plug it in? Can’t he just lie down and watch as day fades? He wishes desperately that he could, but logic overturns emotion as he reasons that time does not stop for grief - that he will wish he plugged it in if he does not. Because he has to leave his bed at some point, because he has homework and dinner and groceries to worry about later because life is continuing even though part of him want to scream at it to stop and let him feel. To rewind and let him re-spend his last year with Tony more carefully, more observant and grateful. He wishes this every time he’s lost someone and he wonders if the repetition of longing means he hasn’t learned. 

May once told him she feels the same way - that no amount of watching and appreciating will ever feel like enough, and Peter knows she’s right. He knows because though he spends every moment with May focused on her laugh - her smile and grace and poise, vowing to know her in every way - he’ll feel the exact same when she is, years from now, lost to him as well. It’s life and death and love and grief, and Peter knows them, but he wishes he hadn’t known them so quickly. 

So often. 

It was familiar, the weight in his stomach. Distinct. It brings back memory after memory -- emotion after emotion; he’s gone through this before, even if it wasn’t quite the same. It’s both similar and completely novel, and thats what hits Peter so intensely. The nuance.

What he remembers of his parents’ grief - that was one kind. A mental confusion of _what_ and _why_ and _how,_ a lesson on life’s brevity at six years old. It was a warning that Peter is entitled to nothing. It’s the weight of knowing, still, that words matter in the here and now, because loss is as sudden as it is unforgiving.

It’s the sort of paralysis in realizing one day, years later, when he’d said “I love you” to his mom and dad for the last time without knowing. It’s being able to name the time and place, a shadow cast on the phrase in memory, marking it’s finality. It’s not knowing it was a finality until it was - it’s his being in his family until he wasn’t.

Ben, though— Ben’s grief had dug into his heart with barbed wire and squeezed.

His parents, he couldn’t quite remember. The sounds of their voice, the style of their dress... The details were fuzzy. The love was there, but it was hard to completely feel what it had been like. Hard to put himself back into the mind of a child and try to see what he saw. But he’d been older with Ben. 

He’d _grown_ with Ben. 

Ben was fireworks on the fourth of July, viewed through their old, obsolete box tv. Ben was science project audience and antique comic club. He was mentor and cheer team and comfort and creation and so much more than _uncle_ could ever hope to convey. And his life had unravelled in the moment it takes a pen to fall to the floor. The time a bullet takes to leave the barrel of a gun. 

The time it takes to realize he’s lost someone _again,_ to know that he never loved them enough — he never expressed it enough. A person couldn’t _possibly—_ Peter couldn’t— he never had the chance to pour all of the love he had for Ben into the man himself. And the minutes between the sound of a gunshot and the words of a doctor naming death were far too few. “I love you” was too big of a phrase to fit. 

And so what Peter knows, what he remembers of past grief, is that the shape it takes when it is of someone who should not have had their stories cut short is different, is gaping. He knows its form. He’s felt it in the loss of three parents who died before their hair greyed, and now again in one whose aging Peter was five years too late to witness. 

Tony wasn’t Ben. He wasn’t Mary or Richard, mom or dad - he wasn’t an uncle, wasn’t a Parker. But he was _Tony._ He was genius and creator and fury and fire and he had a right to be, with what Peter had put him through. He was strict guardian and kind mentor. He was an inventor; an inspiration. He held Peter to a high standard because he had faith that Peter would always meet it. He was back-up; was support.

But even more than that, he was a _chance._

One, solid chance to get it right. 

A chance for Peter to learn what it was like to lose someone to old age. To learn to grow up with a role-model, without seeing them buried before their time. To spend years with, to learn and live and love alongside just as he did with May. He could have been-- he was-- he would have been Peter’s guiding light, through college. Through adulthood, if he’d been given the chance to be. He and May. And Peter knew that the whole construct of two parental figures was false and society-manufactured and not necessarily what a person needed to thrive, but damn if he still hadn’t been sold on it. If he hadn’t hoped, for once, that it could work out. 

If Peter had matured and reflected and realized all that Tony had cared for him. If he could thank him in old age. If he had just been given the chance to get there. Hell, even just through college - just five years. Less than. _If he could have only--_

But fate was an unforgiving beast. Instead, five years had passed without Tony. Or, Tony had passed five years without him. _Five years._ A college education. A marriage. 

A new life.

A daughter.

It had all passed and Peter had been… nothing? It’d passed and all that time was just moments in which he didn’t know Tony, in which Morgan grew up with him instead? When he catches himself on this, Peter knows he’d give anything to see the memories that Morgan must have made with her father. Jealousy whispers to him, in sleepless night after taxing day -- _that could have been you._

And it hurt him, at first. It could have been. But it isn’t Morgan’s fault, and it isn’t Tony’s, and it isn’t his. So if he’s going to get up in the morning and try to sleep at night he can’t give into it. He refuses to. 

He once told May, and she understood. Of course she did - she _always_ did. Always knew him. And so she was already prepared to help him learn to redirect it.

And now when he sees Morgan there’s no bitterness; he only sees Tony’s love. Yes, it’s what he could have had, but doesn’t he have it now? He sees the truth May already knew: that Tony poured himself into Morgan in the same way Aunt May has poured into him. That Morgan has been formed of steel skin and soft heart, of unabashed wonder and virulent curiosity, and she has probably absorbed more caffeine by simply being near Tony than Peter could ever hope to quantify. That she has more loss in common with Peter than any differences they may share in experience.

And then Peter’s smiling to himself, curled under miles of blankets and breath shaking to match his chest. He’s sure that Morgan is full of what Tony couldn’t give before the Blip - full of a love Tony had realized was pointless to stow away, was stupid to hide. And Peter still wished it hadn’t been hidden. He wished he’d fit more words into each moment he’d spent with Tony. In the lab sessions and the missions - in the subsequent patch-up jobs. But maybe he could fit them now. Maybe he still has the chance to. 

And Peter feels lighter. 

Not _light._ Not weightless. But, perhaps, the next time he has to fight to remind himself of all the love he has left to give — all the people left to give it to?

It’ll be a little easier.

**Author's Note:**

> Hey y'all, so I relate to Peter a lot in general as someone who's also lost a lot of folks, so this was in my drafts for a While, but yesterday a close friend of mine suddenly passed away. I came back to the draft and wanted to use it as an outlet to process & uh, here we are. 
> 
> If it made you feel a certain kind of way while reading please lmk because I guess my goal in posting it, is to try and convey an experience of grief and loss and share it with others. So if it resonates with you regardless of your experiences I guess feel free to shoot a message/comment/etc. Or please leave kudos! If you do share in the emotions I'm trying to talk about then please know that: I hear you, and I see it, and I hope this somehow helped processing, and you're not alone. 
> 
> Also just. Take care of yourselves <3


End file.
